Tartar Labourers, 1855

Photograph by Roger Fenton (1819-1869), Crimean War (1854-1856), 1855.

The British and French armies in the Crimea employed locals like the Crimean Tartars to carry out general labouring tasks. This, alongside many Moslem Tartars' sympathy with their Ottoman co-religonists, increased Russian government suspicion that the Crimean Tartars were collaborators and something of a 'fifth column'. In the aftermath of the conflict, many Crimean Tartars emigrated to escape Russian persecution, settling in nearby Ottoman territories.